Book reviews: College and Eighth

College and Eighth – A Memoir

Author: Herbert Hyde

Irreverent and fun, poignant and delinquent, College and Eighth serves up a Depression era tale of his life as a young boy and his reactions to the poverty, joys, pranks and world events that follow him into his teens. The Hyde family is large: with ten kids, Herbie is the youngest of four boys. He hangs with his sisters, as he is sickly and not quite up to the life of his three older brothers. Herbie is also small, and he has to fight and struggle to fit into the lives of the feisty neighborhood kids who also experience the poverty of the depression and a family that struggles to survive.

Growing up in Troy, NY, Herbie allows his readers to see not only the struggles of growing up in urban America at one of its hardest times in our history, but we enjoy the pranks and life lessons that are gifted to him on the streets, in gangs, at school and with his sisters. Baby boomers will love the innocence lost and regained as Herbie romps through all kinds of situations that portray poverty and resilience, fun and sadness.

Well written and enchanting, Herbie devours our attention as we live with him in the 1930s through the Depression and beyond, where his sisters and brothers are homed out to relatives in the constant battle for his mother to feed her family. His father, who constantly chased women and drank to survive, left his Mom to take care of the ten kids in a three flat tenement where the kids chased rats and played games. And when his mother dies, we feel his pain and the pain of his family.

College and Eighth is good memoir that reveals life in an industrial town during the Depression and the survival techniques of a young boy growing into adulthood.

Ratings are based on a 5-star scale

Overall: 3

Review by Broad “A”

We received a copy of this title for our book review. All opinions are our own